I've been gaming since I was in diapers, thirty years ago.I've never skipped school or work to play a game. Lost some sleep or forgot to take the trash out, maybe. These people need to straighten out their farking priorities. The game will still be there when they get home.

Now, back to playing Battlefield Play4Free - which I have spent $0.00 on to date.

I Like Bread:I've been gaming since I was in diapers, thirty years ago.I've never skipped school or work to play a game. Lost some sleep or forgot to take the trash out, maybe. These people need to straighten out their farking priorities. The game will still be there when they get home.

Now, back to playing Battlefield Play4Free - which I have spent $0.00 on to date.

Nice. I've been considering trying that out since BF3 kinda bugs me. Not sure what it is about the game it just....BAH.

Yeah, the irony is that to play Call of Duty, they are neglecting actual duty.

I doubt most jobs people have count as "duty". Responsibility? Sure, but not 'duty'. Your average burger flipper didn't swear an oath to put corporate profits ahead of personal wants in order to ensure proper electric griddle temperatures were applied to the patties.

ShadowLAnCeR:I Like Bread: I've been gaming since I was in diapers, thirty years ago.I've never skipped school or work to play a game. Lost some sleep or forgot to take the trash out, maybe. These people need to straighten out their farking priorities. The game will still be there when they get home.

Now, back to playing Battlefield Play4Free - which I have spent $0.00 on to date.

Nice. I've been considering trying that out since BF3 kinda bugs me. Not sure what it is about the game it just....BAH.

Can I bother you for a player review?

Loved BF2 back in the day. EA mimed the COD "reward" system to the point that I found it unplayable. The field is so skewed by weapon tiers. Hell, back in BF2 most of the best weapons were the default selections. The "unlocks" (what was it, 3 per class?) were generally special purpose, not just outright "better".

ShadowLAnCeR:I Like Bread: I've been gaming since I was in diapers, thirty years ago.I've never skipped school or work to play a game. Lost some sleep or forgot to take the trash out, maybe. These people need to straighten out their farking priorities. The game will still be there when they get home.

Now, back to playing Battlefield Play4Free - which I have spent $0.00 on to date.

Nice. I've been considering trying that out since BF3 kinda bugs me. Not sure what it is about the game it just....BAH.

I agree about BF3; was strongly considering buying it for the discount price on Origin. Then saw the gameplay on YouTube and said...meh.

My wife got me Black Ops for PS3 from a yard sale. She gave it to me around 1:00 PM on a Saturday. I had finished it on the default difficulty without dying and 40% of the trophies finished by 11:00 AM the next day.

I guess the point is really to play online against other people, but FPS players are horrible human beings who should all be launched at the sun so that wasn't happening. I sold it used on Amazon at a profit of $10.

I guess my point here is that I don't care for the CoD games and I think an awful lot of the people who play it have serious mental issues.

On the plus side, it's basically BF2. Most everything can be gotten for free with credits or drawings, and exclusive paid content is mostly skins and accessories. On the minus side, there aren't many maps and half the servers are Oman. Level perks are slow to earn. Graphics are dated, if you care about that stuff. There's no commander or squad leaders; their functions are relegated to class-specific perks. Speaking of classes, YOU ONLY GET TWO PLAYER SLOTS, so choose wisely.

As someone who has played through the entire IW CoD franchise, all I have to say is why do all the CoDs not done by IW look more like BF1942 graphically. Seriously. The graphics look sub par, almost 2d sprite like at times. Are people so into smoking zombie pole that they flock to the non IW titles despite looking inferior?

Vegan Meat Popsicle:My wife got me Black Ops for PS3 from a yard sale. She gave it to me around 1:00 PM on a Saturday. I had finished it on the default difficulty without dying and 40% of the trophies finished by 11:00 AM the next day.

I guess the point is really to play online against other people, but FPS players are horrible human beings who should all be launched at the sun so that wasn't happening. I sold it used on Amazon at a profit of $10.

I guess my point here is that I don't care for the CoD games and I think an awful lot of the people who play it have serious mental issues.

Muting is your freind. You wouldn't believe how much more fun an online shooter can be when you can't hear the pimple faced farkwads.

Flappyhead:Vegan Meat Popsicle: My wife got me Black Ops for PS3 from a yard sale. She gave it to me around 1:00 PM on a Saturday. I had finished it on the default difficulty without dying and 40% of the trophies finished by 11:00 AM the next day.

I guess the point is really to play online against other people, but FPS players are horrible human beings who should all be launched at the sun so that wasn't happening. I sold it used on Amazon at a profit of $10.

I guess my point here is that I don't care for the CoD games and I think an awful lot of the people who play it have serious mental issues.

Muting is your freind. You wouldn't believe how much more fun an online shooter can be when you can't hear the pimple faced farkwads.

Incetardis:The field is so skewed by weapon tiers. Hell, back in BF2 most of the best weapons were the default selections. The "unlocks" (what was it, 3 per class?) were generally special purpose, not just outright "better".

Yeah, that can get irritating when you get sniped by a PKM. But then I just rent a shotgun for 400 credits and camp - I mean, defend. I'll continue to do that until I can get a proper laser sight.

Incetardis:ShadowLAnCeR: I Like Bread: I've been gaming since I was in diapers, thirty years ago.I've never skipped school or work to play a game. Lost some sleep or forgot to take the trash out, maybe. These people need to straighten out their farking priorities. The game will still be there when they get home.

Now, back to playing Battlefield Play4Free - which I have spent $0.00 on to date.

Nice. I've been considering trying that out since BF3 kinda bugs me. Not sure what it is about the game it just....BAH.

Can I bother you for a player review?

Loved BF2 back in the day. EA mimed the COD "reward" system to the point that I found it unplayable. The field is so skewed by weapon tiers. Hell, back in BF2 most of the best weapons were the default selections. The "unlocks" (what was it, 3 per class?) were generally special purpose, not just outright "better".

Not to mention that the Back to Karkand weapons were by and far 'better', as in they were more accurate and killed faster and everyone who used the expansion generally stuck to them(the Chinese QBU-88 comes to mind). They should never make weapon unlocks part of an expansion pack if they're going to trump the original weapons, because then it's like how you had to buy new packs of Magic: The Gathering because the old cards kept getting trumped by the new cards. I'm disgusted by what publishers are doing with games now. I bought Assassin's Creed III on the first day it came out, had it finished by the weekend, and looked at the optional DLC and there were all these to unlock shiat for multiplayer or to simply unlock any extra weapon things for the singleplayer game. For 1200 MS points, the equivalent of 15 dollars. And the multiplayer has microtransactions in these "Eudorito" points. I lent the game to a friend and when I get it back, am selling it. farking POS.

That being said, I preordered Blops 2 because I did put > 100 hours into BLOPS 1 and MW3 was such crap (directly the same as MW2, but suckier!).

I'll probably be playing it with my swearing and drinking xbl friends tomorrow night.

Vegan Meat Popsicle:I guess my point here is that I don't care for the CoD games and I think an awful lot of the people who play it have serious mental issues

What a crass baseless generalization. Just because you choose to consume entertainment in a different method does not mean that everyone who doesn't do things your way is automatically some kind of crazy nut. That kind of thinking is counterproductive and ignorant. It makes me mad enough to murder your face while you sleep.

/this was sarcasm, in case you missed it.//I'll be playing Halo 4, the other game that video game hipsters love to hate

I rented Halo 4 at Redbox, went home and played it for a few hours and gave up and went back to Borderlands 2. It was frustrating and felt really dated. I guess I just can't get into standard FPS games anymore.

I'll probably rent COD because the single player is usually an interesting 8 hours. I figure it's worth 4 bucks for 2 days of Redbox rental.

Swoop1809:I rented Halo 4 at Redbox, went home and played it for a few hours and gave up and went back to Borderlands 2. It was frustrating and felt really dated. I guess I just can't get into standard FPS games anymore.

I'll probably rent COD because the single player is usually an interesting 8 hours. I figure it's worth 4 bucks for 2 days of Redbox rental.

I wish I did that. I preordered it on a whim to give it a fair shake. It's the first Halo game I've really played for more than half an hour and I'm just disappointed. The story is dull, the graphics are crap, and the gameplay is mediocre. Nothing about the game really stood out. I finished the story mode in a little over a day and it just felt shallow and incomplete. The end is a joke. Hopped on multiplayer to try and get something redeemable out of it, but it's just a bunch of annoying 12 year olds continuously jumping and shooting. After about 10 minutes of that nonsense, I had my fill of Halo. Call of Duty may be repetitive nonsense, but it's nowhere near as bad or as dull as Halo.

Flappyhead:Muting is your freind. You wouldn't believe how much more fun an online shooter can be when you can't hear the pimple faced farkwads.

This bears repeating.

Dunno about Ps3, but the 360 has a "friends only" setting, so there is no need to mute people. In fact, Halo 4 built the option into the game iirc.

Coincidentally, I actually injured myself the day before Halo 4 came out, didn't even know it was out at the time, and picked it up the next day and have been playing a little.(feels more like Halo/Halo 3 than Reach, multiplayer is enjoyable if not for nasty lag on occasion, that won't magically go away until you get ded servers on console games, which will be never).

Never called in sick to play a game, but do play them when it happens.

Passing on Blops 2. The create a class system seems so extraordinarily limiting, in the face of all the UAV's and radar function, they've got a hard on against playing certain styles and want everyone to play a certain way. The game's getting to be more and more like Close Range from The Onion.

Multiplayer's the same as it always is, which is to say fun. But the CoD style loadouts are annoying. Now everyone has a dmr/battle rifle/midrange gun all the time, which means if you're outnumbered, you're basically toast. And the matchmaking has an annoying habit of allowing 4v3 games. Bah. Also, the ordnance system means if you're losing, you keep losing. Bah. Also also, they could use a bunch more silly game types.

And get some friends, people. I don't listen to the yelling 12 year olds because I'm talking to other people.

Vegan Meat Popsicle:My wife got me Black Ops for PS3 from a yard sale. She gave it to me around 1:00 PM on a Saturday. I had finished it on the default difficulty without dying and 40% of the trophies finished by 11:00 AM the next day.

I guess the point is really to play online against other people, but FPS players are horrible human beings who should all be launched at the sun so that wasn't happening. I sold it used on Amazon at a profit of $10.

I guess my point here is that I don't care for the CoD games and I think an awful lot of the people who play it have serious mental issues.

I've given up on FPSs for the forseeable future. All of them, and I do mean ALL OF THEM, seem expressly designed to let douchebag "gamers" generate YouTube page hits with asstastic videos of them playing the game in the most ignorant way possible. Either that, or the developers involved have let their games go with game-breaking issues that could and should have been caught with a ridiculously simple beta test.

Dafatone:Multiplayer's the same as it always is, which is to say fun. But the CoD style loadouts are annoying. Now everyone has a dmr/battle rifle/midrange gun all the time, which means if you're outnumbered, you're basically toast.

Ehh...that latter problem's been endemic with the Halo series. There is rarely a circumstance in which odds don't matter, and in those rare circumstances in which they don't, it's largely thanks to map design or extreme skill disparity between players.

The latter games have been by far the worst, since the introduction of online play also introduced the drawbacks of online play, which is that players piss and moan, or exploit power combos, until the nerfstick comes out or playlists die out. Opposed to, you know and god forbid, people play smart.

that bosnian sniper:Ehh...that latter problem's been endemic with the Halo series. There is rarely a circumstance in which odds don't matter, and in those rare circumstances in which they don't, it's largely thanks to map design or extreme skill disparity between players.

The major problem has always been that the "two guns at any time" system will always value the most versatile weapons over situational weapons. The Battle Rifle, Sniper Rifle, and Halo: Combat Evolved Pistol have dominated the series because they're the most dangerous mid-to-long-range threats in a first-person shooter with extremely high lethality relative to the player's movement speed. You're always going to pick the guns that handle the widest range of permutations in such a system and you're not going to save a weapon for one specific type of close-range combat situation, for instance. (For instance, if Unreal Tournament 2004 had a two-weapon loadout system, nobody would ever pick the Bio Rifle or the Assault Rifle. It's those weapons' chance for a high-damage hit while moving around for a better weapon that makes them worth using, albeit in limited situations.) It's just not noticeable in most modern shooters because most of the guns rely on realistic ballistic archetypes, whereas Halo actually features some degree of weapon diversity that is just difficult to use in an actual game situation. Unless something has changed since Halo 3 that I'm not aware of, if you go look at the profiles and stats of good players, you'll notice that their stats are always skewed towards the Battle Rifle/DMR and the Sniper Rifle.

Know what I miss? Quake 1 CA. Was a sad day when I loaded up gamespy and the last few servers were empty and I deleted the folder. I finally got broadband and then...no quake. Quake 2 sucked so bad I never tried any of the other ones. What a dystopian future this has turned out to be.

Medal of Honor : Allied Assault was the last good fps I remember playing. All these new fps's are god damn horrible. BF2 was almost cool, but I found it too late.

A question that's been haunting me for a while now is if I'm just getting too old to enjoy gaming. I've sorta decided that no, new games just suck. There are a few good ones, don't get me wrong. But so much of the magic that existed in the '90s and '00s was lost and forgotten.

Hell, the most fun and addictive game I ever played was a freaking text MUD. Try explaining that shiat to the latest generation of gamers.

/shout out to Dwarf Fortress//waiting on a new version or something to straighten out the stockpiles, that shiat's a god damn mess

Mike_LowELL:The major problem has always been that the "two guns at any time" system will always value the most versatile weapons over situational weapons. The Battle Rifle, Sniper Rifle, and Halo: Combat Evolved Pistol have dominated the series because they're the most dangerous mid-to-long-range threats in a first-person shooter with extremely high lethality relative to the player's movement speed. You're always going to pick the guns that handle the widest range of permutations in such a system and you're not going to save a weapon for one specific type of close-range combat situation, for instance.

That's complicated in the Halo series by the fact the weapons you spawn with by default are also the most versatile weapons in the game. There just wasn't much impetus to pick up anything but power weapons, which were, for their power, niche weapons.

I point to map design as a prime perpetrator of that issue, for the trend in the Halo series for larger and more spacious maps, which devalued close-combat weapons in favor of the versatile default ones. Half of H:CE's maps were close-quarters maps where the pistol, for as lethal as it was, just plain didn't kill fast enough to compete with somebody with an AR and a good sense of when to melee, or somebody with a shotgun -- rat race, wizard, chiron, chill out, the list goes on. The least-spacious map I can think of offhand in which the pistol really began to shine was derelict, and the most-spacious map in which the pistol was king of the hill being battle creek or hang 'em high. The maps that were larger than that were vehicle maps, which made the rocket launcher and sniper rifle primo value.

Later games kept making the maps more spacious, with tunnel ratting and CQC a secondary characteristic that isn't a winning strategy, while increasing the "niche" value of non-default weapons.

That's not even going into most modern shooters' propensity for adding gimmicky bullshiat that encourages cheap play and strips the fun out of the games. CoD's killstreaks, for example, were a terrible addition to the series and horrid precedent to set.

Still, that said a word about UT's weapons...they all had their uses and functions. I've racked up more than a few kills with the bio-rifle, for example, by luring other players into traps or controlling mobility without even the benefit of camping. That was also the main strength of the ripper and shock rifle; the former for the ability to lay down and catch enemies in killzones, and the latter for the ability to knockback with primary fire while laying down orbs to combo. Hell, even the "brute force" flak cannon gave you heavy latitude to outmaneuver enemies with ricochets.

Then again, UT is an entirely different monster as an FPS for its sheer focus on speed and outmaneuvering enemies.

that bosnian sniper:I point to map design as a prime perpetrator of that issue, for the trend in the Halo series for larger and more spacious maps, which devalued close-combat weapons in favor of the versatile default ones. Half of H:CE's maps were close-quarters maps where the pistol, for as lethal as it was, just plain didn't kill fast enough to compete with somebody with an AR and a good sense of when to melee, or somebody with a shotgun -- rat race, wizard, chiron, chill out, the list goes on. The least-spacious map I can think of offhand in which the pistol really began to shine was derelict, and the most-spacious map in which the pistol was king of the hill being battle creek or hang 'em high. The maps that were larger than that were vehicle maps, which made the rocket launcher and sniper rifle primo value.

Yeah, I'm okay with that explanation. I get that impression in a lot of Western games these days, that developers will introduce a bunch of really cool guns or toys into their games, but have fark-all idea of how to design maps that make those weapons more interesting. It's been a fairly long time since I've played any Halo (going back to Halo 3 here) and the hitscan weapons always became a huge issue on the larger maps. They were already ridiculously powerful to begin with (for the reasons that have already been listed), but God, anything on Blood Gulch in CE was just...forget it.

that bosnian sniper:Still, that said a word about UT's weapons...they all had their uses and functions. I've racked up more than a few kills with the bio-rifle, for example, by luring other players into traps or controlling mobility without even the benefit of camping. That was also the main strength of the ripper and shock rifle; the former for the ability to lay down and catch enemies in killzones, and the latter for the ability to knockback with primary fire while laying down orbs to combo. Hell, even the "brute force" flak cannon gave you heavy latitude to outmaneuver enemies with ricochets.

Fair enough. Of course, the underlying principle is that they don't have to be good all of the time, you just have to find that very specific use and maximize its potential. Then again, I don't think I should be lecturing you on this. o.o I just always find it amusing that twelve years ago, Serious Sam required the player to effectively manage a dozen useful weapons in real-time, and now, even games like Bulletstorm and Vanquish give you three at-the-most. (And while both of those are excellent games, it's absolutely shameful that those represent the more complex brand of shooter coming onto the market these days.)